Current wireless sensor network (WSN) architectures are based on the assumption that all sensor nodes are participating in a single global task. In many scenarios, however it will be desirable to use a single sensor network for multiple concurrent applications. In order to enable such multipurpose WSNs efficiently, delimiting each application to its specific set of relevant nodes is one of the key issues that needs to be solved. We present scoping as a general concept for the creation and maintenance of network-wide node subsets and describe a flexible and modular architecture that meets the requirements of multi-purpose WSNs.
